SUENO You buy these records and you never hear your favorites live, especially today, when bands are afraid to play their deep cuts, for fear of boring their audience, especially if aged. Yes, that’s what we are, we baby boomers. Old. We try to deny it. Act like hipsters. But it’s the aches and pains […]

What do you do when everybody is watching? He wrote songs for Gary Lewis, made an album with Marc Benno, but no one knew who Leon Russell was until he went on the road with a conglomeration of thirty-odd people entitled “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” a legendary tour from which Joe Cocker emerged drunk, broke […]

The weather changed in a day. Tuesday I was adjusting the air conditioning. Wednesday I had to turn on the heat. I’m not sure I could live on the east coast again. There’s so much I miss, the intellectual curiosity, the camaraderie, but those gray days…after living in SoCal so long I don’t think I […]

SPOONER OLDHAM About fifteen minutes into the movie, Spooner Oldham walks across the floor of FAME studios, sits down at a ratty old piano, puts his fingers to the keys and starts to play music so soulful, I tingle as I write this, remembering it. RICK HALL He was motivated by rejection, he needed to […]